Echoes of violence: Considerations on radio and genocide in Rwanda

The author argues that the question of RTLM’s role in the genocide can be elucidated through three aspects: ideologically, it played on existing dominant discourses in Rwandan public life for the purposes of encouraging listeners to participate in the killings; performatively, the station’s animateurs skilfully exploited the possibilities of the medium to create a dynamic relationship with and among listeners; and finally, RTLM helped the Rwandan state appropriate one of the most innocuous aspects of everyday life in the service of the genocide.